


Surface Tension

by abrassaxe



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Parent/Child Incest, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 22:41:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3913324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abrassaxe/pseuds/abrassaxe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seraphi Abrasax is withchild for the first time, but not with her first child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surface Tension

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vivian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vivian/gifts).



> This is pretty dark and nasty, so heads up, if that isn't of interest to you.
> 
> I have a headcanon that Seraphi bioengineered her children in some capacity (because I feel no need for Abrasax!dad to exist at all), but only gave natural birth to Titus. Needless to say, that causes a shift in the dynamics between her and her heirs. This is a short riff based on that headcanon.

It took only a glance to know that her body would never be the same. The nectar could undo the deformity of her belly, and yet, it seemed impossible that it could remove the imprint of the thing growing inside her. Balem felt his mother breathe, and felt the creature move under her skin, close to her as he had never been. Seraphi was patiently silent, inscrutable as only gods are inscrutable as he knelt before her, cupping her swollen stomach in his hands. If only his fingers could melt into her, to reach inside and touch it. This new sibling. His breath ghosted along the too-solid flesh of her belly.  
  
“I want to kill it,” he said, at last.  
  
“I know.”  
  
“It would be merciful.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“It hasn’t learned to suffer, yet.” He kissed just above her belly button. The scar that connected her to her forebear. He had a similar scar, but it did not mark where he was once bound to the woman before him, or any that he had met. Even that peculiar little malformation would mark this new child as distinct, as having fed from their mother in a way neither he nor Kalique had done when they were new. It made him want to tear his way in with his teeth. He pushed another breath out through his nose.  
  
“I might have said the same of you, once,” Seraphi noted, carding her fingers through his ruddy hair. “Would you have preferred never to have known what pain is?” It took only a sharp tug to force him to look at her, his scalp tender and aching. Her breasts were heavy, and she was unspeakably glorious. He closed his eyes against the sight, as if to gaze too long might blind him, but made no answer. Would it have been better if someone had cut him out of the artificial womb too soon and let his lungs collapse? He could not imagine a life without pain, though in the silence, he strove to. Seraphi canted her head, and smiled down, stroking his cheek with the back of her hand. Her hair spilled along her throat, warm and dark. “No thoughts?”  
  
“You know my mind.” He leaned into her touch, but the moment she felt it, she pulled her hand away. “Mother, did you – ?” Just for a moment, the question was on his lips, but he barely had time to swallow it down before Seraphi slapped the taste of it out of his mouth. He caught himself, but only just, clutching his face with quivering fingers.  
  
“Ungrateful,” she hissed. Balem made to pull himself onto his feet, but her command stilled him. “I haven’t said you may stand.” Her lip curled as she glared down at him, cradling her belly and the child inside it. Even sneering, she could not be ugly, only magnificent, and the thing he felt in the face of her outrage was not quite fear. For a terrible moment, he hated her. Dissonance filled him up, helpless to adore and despise her, but her voice was a pure tone, and everything shattered within him, dissolved. “I grow tired of making these reassurances, Balem,” she said. “Did I not bring you into being? Have you known me to make worthless things?”  
  
“No,” he rasped, for by then his mouth had dried out. Seraphi only raised an expectant brow. “No, Mother,” he intoned, and her expression softened. Anything more he might have said turned to copper on his tongue.  
  
“Stand up.” His compliance came without thought; he, the marionette, and she, the grand manipulator. She snatched his hands in hers, and pressed them to her stomach. “Did you think I meant for you to love this child?” There was something new in her smile, but the novelty curdled in Balem’s blood, which ran thick and not quite hot enough in his veins. “He is only for me,” she said. “None will love him like I do, just as none have loved you. It is only us.” Her touch was soft, again, as she let her fingertips graze over his wrists, forearms, thumbs hooking in the crooks of his elbows. She did not break contact as she reached up to rest her hands on his shoulders, to rest her hands on his neck. His lips parted. “Foolish boy,” she murmured, as she held him by the throat, and he held her by her belly and the thing within it. “You foolish boy.” Her grip tightened as she stood on the tips of her toes to kiss him. It broke, after several moments longer than it ought. Several moments long enough to hollow out his belly enough that his vile hunger grew there, new and virulent. She licked something scarlet from her lip. When she spoke, she was close enough still, that she could breathe the words into his lungs, there to take root and suffocate him.

 

 

 

“What makes you think that I would ever make something quite like you, again?”


End file.
